What do the stars mean?

[thboyd]

There are 3 stars below my name. What do they signify?

[ovvldc]

These stars represent the amount of your recent donations. Only trinity staff (moderators) and yourself can see them.

Thanks for the donation, and feel free to add more if you like NeoOffice .

Best wishes,
Oscar

[thboyd]

I can't remember how much I donated, but am willing to donate more if my problem were solved. I do like NeoOffice, but as you can see from my other post tonight, I have some problems. I've invested a lot of time in this application.

[sardisson]

There are more details (albeit a bit out of date now, since most forums currently have a minimum donation level) in this post.

This post (linked from the previous post) explains the correlations between donations and stars. I believe you can also look up the exact amount of donations associated with your email address (PayPal account) at PayPal.

Smokey

[pluby]

[thboyd]

Boy, you're a little sensitive.

I said that I like NeoOffice and I think that if $25 is what I donated then it was well spent and have no desire for a refund. If, however, as you say, it's not the right tool for what I need to do, then I probably won't spend more money on it. And, no, I did not confuse development of new features for support services. That was your confusion. What I said was that if NeoOffice were the tool that I need then I would be willing to pay more than $25 for it. I won't bother you any more.

[djpimley]

[rays]

Hmmmm.....

I think it is unfortunate the way these conversations have taken a turn...

Although I advised to stop displaying graphics, I stopped short of going further with my advice. In view of this thread, I think it might be the moment to do so now.

I felt that attempting to force NeoOffice (or any other word-processing software) to substitute for a professional application designed for the purpose of book publishing was ambitiious - but not foolhardy. On the other hand, pushing the limits demands adaption and compromise.

No, I would not have recommended the master document approach. Past experience with M$ Word left me unconvinced of this approach generally for substantial novels. (Yes, I have assisted an aspiring author in the past...)

However, if I felt that I wanted to bend NeoOffice (or any other word-processing software) to my will, I would start from a perspective of working within known capabilities - and possibly push those limits - rather than start from my aspirations.

Concretely, during the development phase of the project, I would probably use separate documents for each chapter, on the basis that I anticipate I will be able join-up the completed chapters through the standard import file functionality which I anticipate (untested because I've never had the need) will handle successfully the merge of footnotes etc.

I certainly would not start with 200+ pages. Nor would I experiment with such a document - too valuable as such a tome doesn't get created overnight. No, maybe 10 chapters of 2 to 5 pages cut from it just to play with to see what happens. Just butcher my "real document" into bits to see how I can re-stitch them so page numbering works and footnotes are conserved. (Definitely footnotes at "end of chapter" until final compilation and only then would I switch them to "end of document", if necessary).

At the end of the day, I know that in NeoOffice I can start each individual chapter file with any page number I like. At worst, I know that I can export the lot as PDFs and assemble the final document with an application like CombinePDFs. Printers (but probably not publishers?) are more than happy with PDFs these days. At least, that's my experience as the client carries the can for any text errors.

And if, for example, I was facing a publishers deadline, I certainly wouldn't be pushing my luck with a software I haven't fully got to grips with - even in terms of developing workarounds to inherent limitations.

I think a 200+ page publications is feasible with NeoOffice but it probably requires an approach less akin to "plug 'n' play" (or "push 'n' hope").

NeoOffice, like M$ Word, does what it says on tin. The difference with NeoOffice, as you have seen all too clearly, is that you can explore new opportunities and possibilities direct with the "manufacturer" and obtain a series of courteous and patient responses. Please try that with Mr. Balmer and report back.

We all work within boundaries of economic and human possibilities. But - even within those confines - amazing things can happen.

I do wish your project every success, whether with NeoOffice or with any other software solution you adopt in the light of experience. I do hope these reflections will be accepted in the spirit in which they have been intended.

Regards

[thboyd]

Ray,
Thank you for your courteous and thoughtful observations. My expectations were undoubtedly too high, although, I think, not without reason. When I worked for a large IT company, we routinely published large proposals using MS Word master documents (There were also divisions within this company that used real page layout programs for the same purpose). These proposals were complex documents that generally consisted of "sections" that were sometimes several hundred pages long with a large number of images as well as other objects. These sections were put together from subdocuments written by many individuals using a common template. I was not part of the publications team that did the desktop publishing, but I do know that they used master documents to manage the process, so without detailed knowledge I believed that MS Word could handle a task of the magnitude that I was attempting and assumed that NeoOffice would also.

When I first started with NeoOffice, I was very pleased with how well it worked. I originally attempted to use a master document approach, but had several problems with it and so reverted to a single large document, which worked great until it really did become large. I believe that the performance issues are with the images, not the text. Unfortunately, my project has a lot of images. If I disable display of graphics, then my 250 page document handles reasonably well, or at least as well as I expected.

I did consider maintaining chapters in separate files, but had to put them together to produce the index and table of contents. Thus it was only near the end when I finally assembled the large document that I ran into problems.

I have never attempted a project of this magnitude on my own before, so was looking for advice from others who may have had the experience. It's unfortunate that the early advice I received seem to reinforce my expectations instead of disabusing me of them. I have no problem with working around issues, especially since I know that I am pushing the envelope. None of my posts were intended to (nor do I think did) criticize NeoOffice. I have inDesign and will probably look into using it in conjunction with NeoOffice, but I'm not really proficient with inDesign and wanted to avoid the learning curve (and I don't really like Adobe's interface).

Regards,

[thboyd]

One other comment that I left out. In my opinion, NeoOffice handled this much better than MS Word.

[PCUK]

There is a low cost DTP package called Pageplus. The basic version is a free download but the "pro" version is only peanuts to buy. I used the basic version to publish a children's illustrated book (only 24 pages) but it was excellent and easy to use. May be what you need and certainly worth a look.

[thboyd]

[shades]

One other program worth looking at is Papyrus. I used it four years ago to publish a book with 236 pages including about 100 photos. I used chapter headers, photo captions were automatically numbered. Movement and automatic numbers updating went perfectly. It is both Mac and Windows. Very fast, never once crashed in the four months of prep. And initially I didn't have a manual, but used the help and floundered my way around. But within one month (working in evenings and weekends) I was able to get the first draft setup. When I finally sent it to the printer, I produced PDFs for that. It does have a few unusual ways to approach things, but very solid Program.

[yoxi]

If you're particularly looking for DTP, you might want to take a look at Scribus, free multi-platform open-source DTP software. I've heard lots of good things about it.

[PCUK]

Unfortunately Pageplus appears to be a Windows only application and I'm a Mac.

>>>>>>>>>

Sorry Tom,
I forgot I used Pageplus before I was converted!!!
Cheers,
Peter